Tuesday 15 April 2008, Mangonui

First we dropped off laundry – and the Korean owners were as happy to see us as we were to see them – I managed to resist kissing them – with difficulty. Then we headed out to a mate of Robs who owns an engine reconditioning business and Rob stripped and inspected the gear box. Having all the tools made this much easier. Rob was happy with the innards. Once we were certain the gear box was fine we headed to Auto Clutch shop with the offending drive plate. To be welcomed by another mate from our boat club but Oh Dear the plate is not a standard one. After some discussion on options Auto Clutch agree to fabricate one for us and to get it done in a couple of hours. We head back to re-assemble gear box, cleaning all the bits and replacing all o-rings and seals (and of course these are all non-standard so we have to visit few suppliers). Recon gear box was built for a tank and she’ll be good for another 30 years.

We go home, Rob has a shower and then we collect laundry ($25 all clean, folded and sorted), stop at Repco for oil, degreaser, silicone and other bits and pieces. Rob also wanted an air cleaner filter but we had to go to
another branch for that so we do that and they happen to have boat hooks (we need to replace one we lost) and sets of taps (not the turn on and produce water kind, but a little device to cut a thread in a hole so it can take a screw. We need these in case we damaged the screw holes when getting the pressure plate off. And finally we collect drive plate. All of the above requires crossing and re-crossing Auckland – in the pouring rain, but we are done and cross the harbour bridge at about 3:30 p.m. ahead of the evening traffic rush.

Mangonui is four hours from Auckland by road. We stop in Whangarei for beer (we owe lots of beer which seems to be the currency of choice in Mangonui) and in Whangaroa for tea and get back to Mangonui just after 9:00 p.m.

Tomorrow we fix Zinkwazi.

And if everything goes ok we will sail out of Mangonui on Thursday and head back to Auckland in 4 legs. We’ll leave Rob’s car here and Rob will catch bus back to collect it.